Thursday, 14 January 2016

Alright, Chuck...

Greetings all. If you are not from the UK, and specifically from the North of England, you are going to need an explanation of this post title. "Chuck" is simply a term of endearment, which is actually a contraction of "chicken"...but enough lexicography.

I have almost finished mounting the ER32 collet chuck to the backplate (see what I did there?). All that remains now is to drill the mounting bolt holes to join the chuck and the backplate together.

After mounting the D1-3 camlock backplate, I machined a register on it that is a very good fit in the recess on the back of the collet chuck. The collet chuck was then fitted to this register, ensuring a very high degree of concentricity.

You'll see that the chuck has three bolt holes. These are tapped for M6. I cannot put bolts through the backplate into these due to the camlock studs. So I am going to drill these out to M6 clearance and then tap the front face of the backplate. The attachment bolts will then thread into this from the front of the chuck.

Machining cast iron is a very dirty business, as you can see from this picture. The swarf takes the form of fine chippings. Needless to say these can be potentially very injurious to the lathe. I managed to minimise the amount of debris by attaching the workshop vacuum cleaner hose to the toolpost. Had I not done this, my poor machine would have ended up buried.

The purpose of the collet chuck is to hold the tubes whilst the ends are being machined, as per previous posts. With the chuck mounted on a backplate, the full length of the tube can protrude through into the spindle bore. I may need to make a push fit insert for the opposite end of the spindle to act as a guide. This will stop any tendency of the tube to whip whilst the spindle is rotating.

This is all part and parcel of making ready to trial the tubular chamber fabrication method. Once I have the chuck finished I will need to look at making a system of stops for the lathe. This will hopefully ensure that all 60 tubes end up the same, within reason. I will also need to look at a means of uniformly bending the tubes, Again, this will involve a series of stops used with the tube bender.

All of this has to be fitted in and around normal family and work life. So progress tends to be slow, though steady. Thank you for your patience and your continued interest in my project.

About this blog

This blog describes the research, design and construction of a Liquid Rocket Engine.
As such it will include information regarding the design and construction of rocket engine components.
This will encompass theoretical and performance concerns, as well as machining, welding and manufacturing techniques used to overcome the various problems encountered.
In addition, my interests in this direction include control and data acquisition. So there will be posts regarding electronic systems and microcontrollers.
It is my hope that as well as being of interest to the rocket engine community, it should also become a repository of general amateur engineering information.
I was inspired to create a blog by the groundswell of interest that I have had in my project from people I have met. I have found that their reactions tend to go from perplexity to enthusiasm rapidly! The main question most people have is not to do with the technical obstacle to be overcome. Most of those who have asked me about my project have wanted to know "Why are you doing this?" So I will try to give some answers to this and to explore my motivation to think, research, create and construct.